Other People's Love Affairs: Stories

by D. Wystan Owen

  He never speaks anymore beyond his vague thanks, never moves that she might sit beside him. She knows it isn’t pride that prevents him. It isn’t anger or passive rebuke. It is shame, only simple, unalloyed shame. Not there when begging from a rabbi or nun—charity being part of their creed—it comes nonetheless in the courtyard of Mercy: the humiliation of asking for food where he wasn’t deemed fit to comfort an infant. When he looked up, having taken her for a Sister, there would have been the first pang of it then.

  He finishes, wiping his hands on his trousers, and Eleanor turns away from the window. Returning to the floor of the ward, she lifts a child into her arms. It squirms a moment, but she is firm in her embrace. Beatrice is standing there also: unspeaking, they commence with their work, humming tunelessly, deep in their throats, the vibrations being therapeutic as well. It isn’t true what her father said, that her mother wasn’t ever happy in Glass. Surely she was as she danced through a stream, the hem of her dress growing heavy with mud, or as she collected fresh flowers to lay at the doorstep of a secret companion. She wishes now she had asked Wen, Did you love her? but feels also that she already knows. That language of strange dreams and found treasure: what is that but a language of love? And what was it, for that matter, when he brought her a hairbrush, when he showed it to her, strands of black hair (or has she only imagined it?) trailing delicately from its bristles?

  The realm of human love is as large as an ocean, she thinks, and she is somebody tracing the shore.

  At the Circus

  In the restaurant, people were eating alone. At small tables next to the windows they were. Tony watched them, the steam that rose from their mugs, and wondered how it would be to grow up, to eat in a restaurant whenever you liked. He felt he would do it every day. This one was called Big Buddy Boy Brown. In the car park, when first they’d arrived, he had managed to read the words on the sign. Mr. Avery said it was grand. He liked the mural of a dog wearing trousers, the chairs around the tables that swiveled in place. They were painted bright red and shiny, the chairs. The tables were made to resemble real wood.

  “Drink a bit more of your milk, Tony, will you?”

  Mr. Avery handed the carton to him.

  You ordered your breakfast from a man at a counter, and then it was given to you on a tray. His breakfast was intended for children. He had chosen it on Mr. Avery’s suggestion. “When I was your age, I ate the Buddy Boy Biscuit,” he’d said, and Tony hadn’t objected. When he was older, he would eat a more mature sort of breakfast, and he would order a soft drink as well.

  “You need the energy,” said Mr. Avery now.

  Tony didn’t really want the milk, but he drank it. In truth, he did not like his food very much. The biscuit was really rather more like a scone; it was cold in the center, and so was the egg. Still, it was special to be in a restaurant. Aunt Beryl didn’t care for going out much herself.

  “If you don’t want the rest of your breakfast, that’s all right. Only have the milk, Tony. That’s a good boy.”

  Mr. Avery’s own breakfast hadn’t been finished. On the orange tray there were scraps cast aside.

  Next to the window a fat man was eating. He had an enormous pile of hot cakes.

  “The circus will be grand,” Mr. Avery said. “It’s a long time since I saw one myself.”

  Tony nodded, wiping milk from his lips. Mr. Avery’s hair had grown over his ears; his clothes were tatty at the collars and cuffs.

  “Are the clowns very funny?”

  “Marvelous. Yes.”

  Mr. Avery liked taking Tony to things. As a boy, he had been keen on the circus. He’d told all about the acrobats and the lions.

  “When I went I had never seen something so good.”

  Outside, Tony felt a lifting of spirits.

  “That was a very good breakfast,” he said, thinking of the brown dog wearing trousers and of swiveling back and forth in the chair. At school he would tell Joey Makepeace about it. He would tell Harriet Aldridge as well. “This is a great restaurant, I’d say.”

  “It was always a favorite of mine.”

  He looked up at Mr. Avery, the smile on his face, his head tilted up toward the sun. He had known this older man all of his life, though if asked, he could not have said how. When you didn’t have a mother or father, people took an interest in you. It was a kindness, one you mustn’t turn back.

  “Gosh, your mother was an angel,” Mr. Avery said, as he had done also on other occasions, always when Aunt Beryl wasn’t around. She never talked about Tony’s mother and would not have liked Mr. Avery to. “The loveliest woman I’ve met in my life.” His face became somber as always it did, and he turned it away from the sky. “Don’t ever listen if someone contradicts that, Tony. It’s a lie if somebody does.”

  Beryl Bideford hung the wash on the line. A low sun fell in weak, canted shafts upon the bare skin of her arms and throat. The garden—unkempt and left to grow wild—was just beginning to turn with the year; she moved through it with neither languor nor haste, pleased with its savage, riotous look. Clothing and linens she pinned at one end, underthings where they were hidden from view. In earlier years she would not have bothered concealing her knickers, might even have enjoyed the idea that a neighbor boy or a frustrated husband would see them and later have a wank in her honor, but now, at fifty, she’d have found it unseemly. Time changed you in that way, and others.

  Autumn sea air swept up and over the hills, cooling the damp, heavy fabric she hung. After this, there was the kitchen to sweep, a sweater button to mend for the boy. Nothing else, though: she’d otherwise be at leisure. No supper to cook, no piss on the bog seat; a mercy, his being out for the day. For a meal she would eat whatever was on hand: sardines, or something else tinned. She would drink tea and sherry with her feet on the sofa, not obliged for once to set an example.

  Beneath her, where the hill fell away, beyond the roofs of neighboring homes, a skiff turned around in the harbor. She watched it, thinking of sailors and gin.

  The fact was, she felt herself too old for parenthood, and ill-suited besides. You’d be hard-hearted not to care for the boy, but that didn’t mean the domestic life suited. She’d been glad to have Avery take him, despite her ample misgivings. No sense in denial: the man was a drunk. But you needed a day here and there to yourself, and you couldn’t refuse the child a friend. Least of all one whose intentions were good. She had known Joe Avery a great many years, long before he fell into ruin.

  The kitchen smelled of a ginger detergent, the space lighted even in its westerly aspect. Beyond it, the living room lay in darkness, the curtains pulled-to against the brightening day. She put the kettle on and, while it boiled, went through to set a log in the grate. A lamp beside the sofa gave a fragile, warm light, enough to illuminate the page of a book.

  On the mantel, reflecting the first licks of flame, were two obelisks carved of black stone. They had been a gift from Mr. Rutherford Townes, a contractor with the Raleigh concern. Years ago, he had put forth a bid for repaving the Payne Road, and she had seen that the council accepted. Indispensable Beryl had been considered at work. That word had often been used. Other things in the house had been similarly gifted: a necklace, an ashtray, a pair of glass bookends.

  Her tea cooled. The fire grew and took hold. It was pleasant, giddy, having the run of the house. The kitchen floor could wait until evening. It could even be put off for a day.

  Reclining luxuriously, she remembered the Champagne that evening with Townes. His large hands, his laugh when they toasted themselves. She remembered the power she’d held over him—in her offices and at the Cavalry later; in each instance she had granted his wish only because it had been her wish as well.

  A bus ticket marked the page in her book, the latest romance in a series she liked. Vi at the library kept them on order. “Another steamy one, dear,” she would say. “You’ll need a smoke after this one. Don’t burn the sheets.” The books were all that remained of Beryl’s old life, chapter
s stolen while the boy was at school or in the night if he slept long enough to allow it. In the past the term old maid had amused her, as pity had when offered to her. She had laughed at what people were ignorant of. It was the same pleasure she took when men would enter her office, condescending because of her title. Secretary, it had said on her desk, even though it was she who’d held the key to the city.

  The logs shifted and she rose to adjust them. All that had ended with the advent of the boy, when she’d had to leave work with a derisory pension. Still, she was careful never to blame him; he’d be the last one she held to account. Blame fell, if anywhere, with her sister. With Pearl, who had left him alone in the world.

  In the novel a farmer tore a fruit in his hands. The heroine bit the flesh from the stone. Townes had been somewhat unlike the others, because even months after the Payne Road was finished he had called her on the telephone, evenings, had asked to see her at the Cavalry Inn. Others had professed to be injured or shocked when they learned she had no interest in marriage, but Townes had said only, “Then I’ll take what’s on offer.”

  The girl in the book would fall in love with the farmer, a foolishness Beryl lightheartedly scorned. “A roll and a stroll” her own motto had been. Perhaps nature, she thought, had divided things such that Pearl entertained love enough for them both. Certainly that would seem to have been so. Heaven knew the poor dear had never been above folly.

  The circus was held beneath a great tent. A big top, Mr. Avery called it. It had white and red stripes up its length. From the field where they parked, some distance away, it resembled a giant peppermint sweet; Mr. Avery said so and Tony agreed.

  “Perhaps you’ll have a peppermint candy of your own. They have large sticks that will last the whole day. Would you like that, Tony? A peppermint sweet?”

  Tony shrugged and pressed an ear to his shoulder, a habit because the wool of his sweater was soft.

  “Or is it another you’re thinking about? You can have whatever you like. It’s not every day you go to the circus.”

  “And I ate a good breakfast.”

  “Aye. That you did. So which is it? Which treat did you fancy?”

  They crossed a bridge over the roadway they’d traveled and another empty lot at the edge of the fairground. Other children walked with their parents, holding hands or sometimes running ahead.

  “I was thinking of candy floss, really.”

  He’d been told about the pink and pillowy sweet, how it vanished as soon as it went in your mouth.

  “You’ll like that,” Mr. Avery said. “It’s another favorite of mine.”

  There were booths set up around the edge of the tent. Clowns were making shapes from balloons. Music played; you couldn’t tell where it came from. The same sort you’d hear at the boardwalk in Glass. The clowns wore colorful trousers and shirts, with bright hair beneath their hats and paint on their faces.

  “Let’s find our seats first,” Mr. Avery said. “When we’ve found them, I can go for the sweets.”

  “All right.”

  “Or did you want a balloon? The clowns can make marvelous shapes with balloons.”

  Tony regarded one of the clowns. He wore ragged clothing and gloves on his hands; beside him, propped against the side of a stall, was a handkerchief on the end of a stick.

  He shook his head and they made for the entrance, where ushers in fancy dress stood by the turnstiles.

  “Hold on to your ticket,” Mr. Avery said, handing Tony a piece of blue paper.

  People began pushing as they drew near the entrance. Tony stood at Mr. Avery’s side. The clown with the kerchief on the end of a stick had forgotten to paint a bit of his throat. The bare skin had shown, sunburned and stubbled; thinking about it made Tony afraid.

  “Step right up,” said a man in a hat. He was nearly as big as the one from that morning, by the window eating hot cakes for breakfast.

  “You’ll hand him the ticket,” Mr. Avery said.

  Tony nodded. The man tore his ticket in half.

  In the big top there was a great deal of noise. Children sat or stood on their seats, shouting and pointing at the still-empty stage. The air was heavy and smelled of wet paper. Tony felt too hot in his sweater. In school it was like this: noisy and savage. At lunchtime, or in the assembly hall. He ate his lunch with Joey Makepeace at the edge of the yard, many days not saying a thing. Joey never asked about Tony’s mother, as sometimes other boys rudely did. If Joey talked, it was about a picture he’d seen or about freight lorries, which interested him. He wore eyeglasses and had the large teeth of a rabbit.

  Their seats were near the edge of the tent, raised from the ground like gymnasium stands. Beside them were a boy and a girl.

  “Wait here,” Mr. Avery said. “I’ll get our treats and be back in a flash. There’s a good ten minutes before it begins.”

  Tony watched Mr. Avery go. From his seat, the stage appeared distant and small.

  A freight lorry might weigh forty tons, Joey said, which was nearly as much as a whale. A hush descended over the tent. Music started playing from speakers, loud drumming, a voice that said, “Ladies and gentlemen.” Even the unruly children were still.

  From the rafters on either side of the stage, two men began falling, suspended from ropes. Arms spread, as if in flight, they held on with their feet. Acrobats: Tony knew it at once. They swung down in shocking, dangerous arcs. People gasped; a number of children jumped up. Where the acrobats met, they each leaped through the air, catching hold of the other man’s rope and swinging to the opposite side of the stage.

  Tony had never seen anything like it. He couldn’t imagine being so brave. Even from a distance you couldn’t believe it. They resembled a kite he’d once seen a man fly: triangular, carving sharp lines in the air.

  He had been with Mr. Avery on that day as well, and Aunt Beryl. He had been given a kite of his own, and Aunt Beryl had allowed him to keep it. Sometimes she said he could not accept gifts, but when Mr. Avery gave him the kite she said yes. It was orange and blue, in the shape of a dragon. Aunt Beryl had stood beside Mr. Avery, not speaking much but companionable. Mr. Avery had shown him how you’d wait for a gust, then run with the string taut behind you.

  “First time out?” the man with the other kite had asked Tony. When the green triangle turned in the sky it sounded like a piece of cloth being torn.

  “A birthday present,” Aunt Beryl replied. “From his friend, Mr. Avery here.”

  After that it had mostly been spoiled. After she had said friend to the man. It would not have been so bad to be taken for Mr. Avery’s son. Tony wouldn’t have minded at all. It would have been all right to be mistaken for a family.

  Quickly, he scanned the crowd and the aisles. Mr. Avery couldn’t be seen.

  Now there were four men swinging from ropes. Each of them tumbled and turned. The music grew louder and faster in pace, and with it the speed of the jumping increased. Everyone cheered as the men flipped about. In the end, they all let go of their ropes and landed with their hands on their hips. The audience carried on with applause.

  Another man came onto the stage. He was dressed like the one who had taken the tickets. He began shouting into a speaker. Tony covered his ears. He looked again for Mr. Avery but still didn’t see him. He had said he wouldn’t miss the start of the show. A clown came out and stood behind the man in the hat, mocking him, aping his movements. When the man turned around, the clown would be still. Everybody in the whole big top laughed.

  Tony felt a tap on his shoulder.

  “Where’s your dad gone?”

  It was the girl who was sitting beside him. She wore a blue dress and had brown hair in braids.

  In school, Harriet Aldridge was kind. Joey Makepeace said he found her very pretty, but Tony thought he was only saying so. This one was a little bit older. Eight, perhaps even nine.

  “He’s only gone to buy a candy,” he said.

  “What kind?”

  “Candy floss. I’ve never ha
d it before.”

  The girl turned her attention back to the stage, laughing at something the clown had just done. Her brother leaned across their mother’s lap. “Eugenia’s talking to a stranger,” he said.

  “He’s only a little boy,” the girl said. “His father left to buy a treat and he hasn’t come back.”

  “He will come back,” Tony said, though his heart was beginning to thump. The heat and the laughter were making it worse.

  Eugenia’s mother was looking at him. She had stopped paying any attention to the circus.

  “All right?” she said, in a delicate voice, and then repeated, louder, because of the noise.

  Tony nodded and pretended to look at the stage.

  “Your dad’s been gone since the start of the show?”

  The mother had pale, pudgy skin on her face. It looked like the biscuit he’d eaten for breakfast.

  “He only went for a sweet,” Tony said.

  “Twenty-five minutes it’s been.”

  Aunt Beryl sometimes said you couldn’t count on Mr. Avery. He was the kind of man who blew with the wind. “More, even, than most,” is what she had said. But still he wouldn’t miss the whole show. All morning he had been on about things: The jugglers and clowns. The bear who could dance. The man who put himself in a box. It was only that people were crowding around. That was what was troubling Tony. They were wondering where his father had gone. He was tired of people wondering that, and he was tired of them wondering about his mother as well.

  “He’s maybe having a cigarette,” Eugenia said. “It might be he doesn’t like to smoke around kids.”

  Tears were coming into his eyes. If a fuss was made, things would be spoiled again. Aunt Beryl would see that something was wrong and would say again how you couldn’t count on a man. She wouldn’t invite him to stay and have tea; she wouldn’t be companionable.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Tony said.

  He made his hands into fists and pressed them under his eyes, the way Joey Makepeace had said you could do. You put your fists on the tops of your cheeks and pressed there. It was a way to be brave.